Tidy up your files like a card game — swipe to keep, delete, or sort. Nothing happens until you confirm.
My Desktop and Downloads folder were a graveyard: hundreds of old screenshots, dead shortcuts, random installers, half-forgotten files. Every "clean-up" felt like a chore, so it never happened.
Sweep turns that chore into something closer to a game. It shows each file as a card with a real preview, and you make one quick decision at a time — swipe left to delete, right to keep, or drop it onto a folder to sort it. The trick that makes it safe: nothing actually moves or gets deleted until you confirm everything at the end. Until then you can undo, restore, and rethink as much as you want.
It started as a personal tool to declutter my own machine, and I'm releasing it free and open-source in case it helps someone else dig out of the same mess.
Full transparency: I'm not a hardcore developer — I'm a "vibe coder." Sweep was built collaboratively with Claude (Anthropic) through a long back-and-forth of describing what I wanted, testing it, and iterating. The code, the previews, the logo, and this very README came out of that process. I think that's a cool story rather than something to hide, so it's right here in the open.
- 🃏 Card-style sweeping — one file, one decision. Swipe or use the buttons.
- 👀 Real previews — images, PDFs (first page), Word (
.docx), Excel, text/CSV, ZIP contents, 3D.stlmodels, video thumbnails, and the real Windows icons of programs and shortcuts. - 🗂️ Sort into folders — drag a card onto a folder. Pin existing folders or create new ones; nothing is created on disk until you apply.
- 🧹 Modes — go through everything, largest first (whole folders count, great for reclaiming space), duplicates only, oldest, newest, or a daily 10-file habit with a streak.
- ↩️ Safe by design — a review screen before anything happens, deletions go to the Recycle Bin (restorable), and you can undo moves afterwards.
- 🕓 History — every applied move and deletion is logged, with one click to find a file at its new location.
- 🌍 English & German, follows your system language and light/dark theme.
- ⌨️ Remappable keyboard shortcuts.
- Go to the Releases page.
- Download the latest
Sweep-Setup-x.x.x.exe(installer) — or theSweep-x.x.x-portable.exeif you'd rather not install anything. - Run it. Windows SmartScreen may warn about an "unknown publisher" because the app isn't code-signed (signing costs money); click More info → Run anyway.
That's it. Sweep is a normal Windows app from there.
Requires Node.js 18 or newer.
git clone https://github.com/the-emunator/sweep.git
cd sweep
npm install
npm start # run the appTo build the Windows installer yourself:
npm run dist:win # output lands in dist/| Gesture / key | Action |
|---|---|
| Swipe left | Delete (to Recycle Bin) |
| Swipe right | Keep |
| Drag onto a folder | Sort into that folder |
| Space | Decide later |
| Z | Undo last decision |
All keys are remappable in Settings. The first time you launch Sweep, a short interactive intro walks you through it (you can replay it any time).
Your files stay yours. Sweep is fully offline. It never uploads anything, has no telemetry, and only touches files when you press "Yes, apply." Deletions go to the Windows Recycle Bin, so they're recoverable.
- Electron — desktop runtime
- Vanilla JavaScript, HTML and CSS for the UI (no framework)
- PDF.js, Mammoth.js and SheetJS for document previews
- electron-builder for packaging
The architecture keeps the UI sandboxed: it never touches the file system
directly. All file operations go through a small, explicit bridge
(preload.js) to the main process (main.js).
Sweep is built on great open-source work. Every library, font, and icon set it uses — with authors and licenses — is listed in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md. Thank you to all those projects. 🙏
Sweep itself is released under the MIT License — see LICENSE. You're free to use, modify, and redistribute it.
Issues and pull requests are welcome! See CONTRIBUTING.md for a quick start. Sweep is a hobby project, so please be kind and patient. 🙂
Sweep is free and ad-free. If it saved you some time and you'd like to say thanks, you can buy me a coffee on Ko-fi. Totally optional — a ⭐ on the repo helps just as much.